Episode 314 The 3 Keys to Building a Business that Works for You

In this week’s episode, Anna breaks down three essential elements needed to build a business that truly works for you, balancing profitability and enjoyment while offering the freedom and flexibility desired. She will get into how to create an intentional business model, embrace authentic marketing and sales, and implement simple systems to prevent burnout. She’s also introducing a new webinar series aimed at cutting through the overwhelming noise of business advice, helping to create a tailored path that aligns with personal goals and lifestyle. Tune in for actionable insights and valuable tips to redefine success and build a business you love.

Key moments:

[00:00] Intro and Episode Overview

[01:07] The Challenges of Modern Business Advice

[02:30] Impact of Social Media on Business Goals

[04:02] Common Myths in the Business World

[08:16] Introduction to the Three Core Elements

[10:28] Detailed Explanation of an Intentional Business Model

[14:12] Importance of Ethical Marketing and Sales

[18:47] Simplifying Systems and Processes

[22:09] Information on Anna’s Business Accelerator Programme

Resources mentioned:

Company of One by Paul Jarvis

The 3-part webinar series on building a business that works for you

The Business Accelerator programme

Build an intentional business

It struck me the other day, and it might seem obvious to you, but I realised that all the things I talk about in terms of building a portfolio career, pursuing an alternative, non-conventional path, building an expert business, working for yourself, doing fractional work, all these alternative career paths didn’t really exist 10, 20, 30 years ago. And there’s so much information available now, so there are so many opportunities. And with digital social media, it’s so easy to create your own career, develop your own business, and yet it is also so, so difficult because there is so much information available, there are so many options, so many experts, artificial intelligence, even now telling us what we should or shouldn’t be doing. And I think that’s a problem. First of all, when it comes to the business advice industry, I think let’s call it, there is so much noise in the online business space. We’re bombarded with, to be honest, still quick fix solutions, right? Big, big promises. I’ve been in this space for a decade and I see it less now, I suppose probably because I’ve learned to shut it out.

But there was a time when every single Facebook ad and post and so on, probably I see it more on Instagram at the moment because I’m a bit more active there and LinkedIn, every single expert is telling us, you know, this is what we need to do, we need to have a course, we need to do webinars free webinars, pre-recorded webinars. This is how you get to seven figures. The funnels, the email sequences, right? And everyone seems to have a formula for success as marketing, as a kind of golden ticket. But the reality is that what works for one person may not work for everybody. And even if it does, it might not and probably won’t give us the lifestyle and the type of business that we want, because we’re all different. So a lot of us will end up, and I have done that too, I hold my hand up here, wasting our time, energy and money on courses and programmes and strategies that don’t align with our goals, with our values, with our lifestyle. And as much as all those digital sources and information and social media channels and so on are powerful tools and good sources of information, there’s also that constant pressure. We see these polished highlight reels of, I certainly do, glamorous women who are making seven figures and are crushing it at their business and oh, if you only use these hooks in your reels, then you’ll reach all these people, you’ll go viral.

And this one thing changed everything for me. And it’s so easy to feel like we’re falling behind, right? First of all, that we need to keep up in the first place, but then worse, that we’re actually doing something wrong and everyone else is succeeding. So why don’t I. In a programme where the coach, the leader is saying, oh, it must be that you’re not doing it properly, then that can be really difficult to hear, especially if you are doing everything you think you’re doing everything right? It’s so frustrating and disheartening not to get the results that apparently everyone else is getting, right? But the. The truth is, unfortunately, that these experts aren’t necessarily or definitely not showing us the whole picture. Social media definitely doesn’t show us the whole picture. There’s not the behind the scenes or when it is behind the scenes, it’s a very polished version. We don’t necessarily see the stress, the burnout, the failures and so on, right? We see those overnight success stories that in fact are 10 year slogs.

I saw, oh, gosh, I can’t remember who it was now, but I saw on Instagram someone share the insight that, you know, oh, I think it was Jimmy Carr, British comedian and who, funnily enough, we used to work in corporate marketing, should get him on this podcast. But he shared that everyone is jealous of your success. No one is jealous of how you got there, right? And that’s another story. But the hard work and so on isn’t the stuff that kind of sells tickets, that creates viral Instagram reels, unless it’s done in like a haha, light hearted kind of meme kind of way. So unfortunately, there’s all this information, all this advice, all this pressure and we end up potentially copying someone else’s business model, failing to implement, trying to do all the things, not focusing and so on. And there’s also a lot of myths, right, that we need to challenge that I’ve seen over and over in the space. The classic one is, you know, you’ve got to work more hours working for yourself than you used to do working for an employer, but at least, hey, you love it. Or, you know, obviously you need the fancy branding, you’ve got to spend a lot of money on coaching, you’ve got to lean in and take risks and so on, right? And you have to have a huge audience.

You need those at least 10,000 followers, which for me is a lot on Instagram. I’ve Got it on LinkedIn after many years of consistent posting. But email lists and all these things, right, you need to have huge, huge audiences of millions to sell all your courses, which is true, to be fair, if you’re selling a very cheap course, you do need lots of followers or you need to be selling high ticket things. You need to be selling programmes that cost 100k a year or whatever it is, right? And another myth is if you’re not scaling, you’re failing. There’s a book called Company of One and there’s sort of, I guess, a growing movement or at least some of us are realising that we don’t necessarily want to have the big team, the offices, the huge investment, the massive business. You know, we want something that might be a little bit negatively called a lifestyle business.

Yes, I have bold ambitions. I want to make a difference. I want to do interesting work, make lots of money, but I don’t want to do that at the expense of family and health and so on. So you know what? It might be a bit slower and it won’t be as shiny and sexy as some others, perhaps, but it also won’t be as stressful, it won’t be as hustly, it won’t be as burnout y and it will be a whole lot more enjoyable. So how do you cut through the noise and build a business that actually works for you? Well, I haven’t done this in a while, but I want to invite you while I have you now, rather than leave until the outro to a workshop. And don’t worry, I’m going to outline the model in a moment, so don’t turn off. I will be sharing more value today. You don’t have to wait for the webinar, but if this is all resonating and if you do want to join me, then I am going to run a three session series on exactly this, on the three elements that I’m just about to tell you all about the three things I think you need in my experience of a decade, of the twists and turns and working with clients and so on to build a business that works for you.

So if you go to onestepoutside.com abusiness that works. So that’s onestepoutside.com abusciness that works. If you’re listening to this episode live, you’ll be able to sign up to join me live. And if not, then hopefully I will have set it up as a recording that you can watch in your own time as well. So onestepoutside.com join a business that works. Now, the answer is not to chase the latest trend or to follow someone else’s blueprint. So no, I’m not going to give you a blueprint. You need to design a business that aligns with what you care about, with who you want, how you want to live, not to mention your skills, your strengths, your financial goals, financial situation, family, etc.

Etc. Right. But there are certain things that I think we share and I say we talking about me, my clients, my community. Those of you who are listening and have been listening for a while around anchoring a business in our values, doing things that feel authentic to ourselves, not having to hustle, not having to pretend to be someone we’re not having all the stress of doing things that aren’t that don’t sit well with us. Feeling kind of sleazy and salesy. We want to make it work in an integrated way. So I talk about work life integration. We want a business that supports life rather than the other way around.

So as I said that I’ll be focusing on in the webinar these three core elements when it comes to building a business that works for you as an individual. And those three elements are 1 an intentional business model 2 authentic marketing and sales and 3 simple systems let they let you run the show, as it were, and without burning out. And I don’t mean, by the way, already to jump in that last one. I don’t mean lots of automation necessarily and so on. I really mean boiling down your business model and the way you’re working to the most simple things that are going to work for you and not require you to embrace tech when you’re not techie, show up extroverted when you’re not extroverted, meet in person when you just want to work from home, and so on.

So these are the three kind of core elements of building a business that’s not only profitable but also enjoyable, where you can make a real impact without sacrificing your personal life. So let’s break these three elements down, although I will go into much more detail on the three part workshop series. So the first one is an intentional business model. What we’re not going to do is follow the kind of hustle focused or one size fits all models. We’re not going to access accidentally fall into some hodgepodge that we’ve just kind of done with a patchwork of taking bits from here and bits from there and so on. We’re going to intentionally create a business and a business model that fits our goals, our preferences, our lifestyle. So fundamentally the model needs to be aligned with our personal goals. That’s why I always talk about what your version of success looks like, right? It’s the hours you want to work, it’s the amount of flexibility you want.

It’s also aligning with perhaps a person, personal mission, a bigger cause that you support or believe in. It’s really anchored in what you want. Understanding what your ideal day looks like, how you want to spend your time during the week, how you want to show up, what kind of clients do you want to work with? Is it corporate? Big organisations, small agile startups? Is it individuals in person or online? It’s all those questions around what you want your business to look like. It’s also a model that can kind of grow over time to the point where you want it to grow without overwhelming you.

So if we’re doing a one to one service at a really low price, we’re not going to be able to add more clients to our plates. Right. We need to then look at pricing or look at some kind of group offering. Um, if we’re working on a sort of retainer model with a corporate client and it’s really over spilling into every working hour and it feels like it’s, it’s almost like a full time job or several jobs, that’s not going to be scalable either. We can only work with one or two of those clients max at a time. So that’s something to look at. And then I’ve Mentioned this and always this is core to it. The model needs to protect our time and energy for other areas of our life, right? So that we don’t burn out, so that we don’t create a beast that’s going to control us and so really putting in those big rocks our personal goals and interests and people and things that matter to us first.

So that’s the first element. It’s a really intentional business model. That doesn’t mean we sit on our bums and wait until we have the perfect plan or even that we can create a perfect plan on paper. In theory, we have to go into the real world, listen, research, talk to people, test, validate and iterate. But we need to start with a really clear vision and goals and understanding of what we want, and then make the choices that we make when it comes to clients and programmes and services and pricing and so on with those goals in mind. So that’s the first one, an intentional business model. The second one is what I like to call ethical marketing and sales. And it feels like jumping on kind of ethical marketing bandwagon at the same time as it feels completely ridiculous to even say it, because I don’t think any of us want to be unethical, but a lot of us have this icky feeling when we see, and you know, we have a different line for what’s icky and what’s not, Right? I know.

I’ve talked to people in, who work in certain industries where many things are acceptable and others perhaps where it’s, oh, an email sequence that feels horrible, right? So it’s not the thing itself that is ethical. Not ethical. But if something feels off to you, then probably you shouldn’t be or you shouldn’t want to do that in your business, right? So really starting really with the client, right? Thinking about this as a human being, we stress about, oh, I’ve only got 50 people on my list or I’ve only got three people who turned up. These are three people or 50 people, or 2,000 people who are reading your stuff, who are showing up, who are interested, right? Or even if you just have one client, you’re working with that person, you should be treating them like they’re the most important person in the world. As long as you’re really understanding your clients, addressing real problems they’re facing, not just pushing things for the sake of pushing them, right? You believe that your product or service or programme or whatever it is works, that’s why you’re trying to sell it. If you don’t believe that whatever Doubts and imposter syndrome and so on. You, you might have. If you don’t believe in yourself and your services, then why are you in business? Right.

You have to believe that you have something to bring to the table here and that you can help your clients. Then when it comes to anything from, you know, pricing or service promises, we want to be really transparent and build trust. So if you have any guarantees or money back or terms and conditions, you know, rather hiding that in like a 25 page legal document, we want to be super clear on that upfront boundary setting.

That’s really important for me. Be clear on that. I will reply on these days, within these hours, you can contact me via this and so on. Right. In terms of marketing, you know, you’re not kind of. I wouldn’t. I’m going to say this is my personal preference, do one of those sort of empty webinars. I’d say they’re kind of outdated now, but five or six years ago there was this whole formula where you kind of did a hey, this is my story, how I went from, you know, living on the street to eight figure business.

And these are the problems I faced and these are the challenges. And hey, I’m not going to tell you anything of value on the webinar but if you sign up to this thing, even worse. And I had people I spoke to go to those big events where it’s a free event, talking about all these things and then they kind of put use all sorts of manipulative tactics and things to get you to the back of the room at the end to sign up to like a 20,000 programme or it’s, you know, really clever copywriting and psychology and so on. I don’t know where the line is and you get to decide that for you. But again, the point is, what do you feel good about? I feel good about showing up, talking honestly about stuff, hopefully positioning it relatively strongly, coming across, being credible, having conversation. If this is the right thing for you, I’d love to work with you. If it’s not, then you know what, that’s fine too. Or you can use these services or I can recommend you to someone else.

Right. And that leads me to the next part of sort of this ethical, authentic marketing and sales. It’s around building relationships and having conversations. It’s not hard selling. It’s about being ready when you’re ready. So I have so many people I talk to and it’s just not the right time. And I can sense that there’s no point in me Pushing them to join me because either they won’t show up to the cause or they’ll want their money back or they won’t get the value.

So no worries at all, you know, keep listening, keep following along. Here’s a resource that will help you and I’ll cheque in with you in a few months or later in the year.

So that’s the kind of stuff you can do through content, through lives, through conversations and so on. But you’re really showing that you care about the person and you’re not doing the kind of. Yeah, the manipulative tactics to sell at any cost and sort of false urgency. There’s only three spots and there’s only two minutes until this offer that I’ve arbitrarily made up runs out all that thing. So, number one, intentional business model, number two, ethical marketing and sales, and number three, simple systems. And like I said, it’s not about lots of tech and automation and so on, but there are certain things that we do need, for example, to automate. I like to automate, kind of following up on invoices to my corporate clients. They’re inevitably late and I don’t like the idea of having to email them and so on.

So that kind of happens automatically. And obviously if there is an email sequence or like that, that helps people to get to know you when they first sign up to something, by all means, anything that kind of, yeah, takes off the repetitive tasks is really useful to automate.

But above all, before you even automate or delegate, which is the other piece is having those clear processes and systems. A few of them include, obviously people need to be able to pay you. You need to be able to sort of onboard and off board a client.

That doesn’t have to be hugely complex, but there’s a sort of, hey, this is what happens when you join, this is what happens when you leave. Wrap up. Content creation. I’ve had all sorts of complex systems for that in the past. I’m playing around with it. Obviously, channels change and tools and technology evolve as well. So it’s tricky. It’s not something that you create once and then it’s done.

But my focus now is always to be as simple and streamlined as possible. If I can record one video, that then gets chopped up or do two things at the same time or whatever it is, batch content, all these kinds of things that make your life easier. And then I hinted at it, but delegation, outsourcing, you know, having. And it doesn’t have to be. It probably won’t be an assistant who does everything for you, but it might be. You get obviously the accountant over here or the bookkeeper. You have the. I don’t know, I was going to say designer, maybe graphic designer over there to do some jobs.

It’s sort of freelancing, it’s one off project sometimes or it’s ongoing admin support. But that is what’s going to help you in the long run. Because if I just spent all my time doing all the admin stuff that I’m not good at, that’s difficult for me, that someone else could do faster, better and cheaper, then that’s taking time away from my business. More importantly, it’s taking time away from my family. So again, lots of noise out there, lots of magic blueprints and golden tickets and promises and so on. I think these three elements are what’s core to designing a business that works for you. So one, the intentional business model that you’re designing around your personal goals and preferences. Two, authentic and ethical marketing sales and you get to decide what feels good and transparent and trustworthy for you.

And three, simple systems, processes that don’t require lots of tech or complicated funnels and things. But really, hey, I do this live. I follow up with people and then I propose my programme or I connect with them on LinkedIn. I have these conversations and then I invite them to my webinar or to a call or whatever.

Keep it simple. So again, if you are interested in learning more about that, obviously keep listening because I’ll be talking more about these elements in the coming weeks and months. If you want to join me on the live series, then again you can go to onestepoutside.com forward/abusiness. That works. And we also have my business accelerator programme. So if you’re interested in that, then ping me a message. You can get me on social media, Anna S.E. lundberg, Facebook, Instagram, wherever you’re active.

And I’d love to have a conversation with you, but hopefully this resonates. Hopefully it lands. Looking forward to hearing what you think and looking forward to digging deeper in the coming weeks. See you next week. Bye for now. Alright, so if any of this resonates and you’re ready to build a business that truly works for you without the overwhelm, without the hustle, all that constant second guessing, then I’d love for you to join us in the business accelerator. Bringing together a small group of like minded experts, coaches, consultants, solopreneurs who want that personalised support, clear action, steps and above all real accountability. If you want to get in early, then head on over to onestepoutside.com accelerate one step outside.com accelerate to register your interest or join the waiting list.

Let’s create the business and the life that you have always wanted. Can’t wait to see you inside.

WORK WITH ANNA

Let us help you design a business and a life that gives you freedom from the 9 to 5. There are several options for how you can work with us. Choose the programme that’s right for you.

The Outsiders Business Incubator

A year-long business incubator for experienced corporate professionals who want to translate their skills and passions into a profitable and fulfilling business. onestepoutside.com/9to5

The Outsiders Business Accelerator

An ongoing mastermind for service-based business owners, freelancers and online entrepreneurs who are ready to achieve success on their own terms. onestepoutside.com/accelerate

The Outsiders Business Academy

A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course

1:1 Coaching & Mentoring

If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching